MI6? Seriously? Where are the Aston Martins, the hot chicks, the ball point pens that can be used as death rays in addition to signing cash vouchers at the casino? All I got in this movie was a bunch of old dudes sitting in closed rooms looking at teletype machines and using big words while lying to each other. Oh well. In John le Carre’s ‘Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy’ we get a good taste of what the spy game is really about… that being old dudes sitting in closed rooms using big words while lying to each other. If that sounds a little on the dull side to you, it can be. This is why you have to really… and I mean really have to pay attention to everything that’s going on with this one and allow it play all the way through or it will lose you and you won’t be able to get back.

The year is 1973, in the heart of the Cold War and the man we know as Control (John Hurt) is running things at some section of the British Intelligence arm MI6. Control is convinced that there is a spy in their midst, but not just any old spy, but a spy that is in their inner circle and one that has been there for a while. He dispatches one of his top operatives in Jim Prideaux (Mark Strong) to Budapest to get some info on this alleged spy, but the op goes bad. So bad that Control is now out of MI6, and to make sure the stench of Control’s stink is out of the building, they even oust his right hand man George Smiley (Gary Oldman).

Still, the rumors of a spy within the inner circle persists which forces the Powers that Be to bring Smiley back as an outsider to try to find out who this spy might be. His suspects, via documents left behind by Control… who we won’t concern ourselves with anymore… are MI6 Top Dogs Alleine (Toby Jones)… the Tinker, Hadyon (Collin Firth)… the Tailor… Bland (Cieran Hinds)… The Soldier, and Esterhase (David Dencik) who is known as Beggar Man. Control, who was nothing if not paranoid, also wasn’t completely convinced that his man Smiley was on the level either.

What will follow are a series of cryptic events, misdirections, red herrings and suspect information as Smiley, along with his personally selected right hand man Peter Guillam (Benedict Cumberbatch) doing his leg work, may be leading us to the spy in the soup or it may be leading us into mass confusion. One or the other depending on, as I mentioned before, how closely you were paying attention.

So I’m watching this movie with my lovely bride who tends to pepper me questions when a movie has a plot that’s the least bit complicated, which as I’m sure you can imagine can be a little irritating. Though I can’t say anything. This time however her questions were a very good thing because they were good questions that forced me to go back and think about what I have just seen, and how what I think what we are seeing may relate to the plot. It’s not that the plot itself is overly complex mind you, we have five guys and one of them is passing vital secrets to the Soviet Union, it’s just that the way that director Tomas Alfredson assembled this story of his doesn’t always leave us with crystal clarity where we are in the story.

For one there are a lot of characters in this film and not all of them have distinct personalities to distinguish themselves from one another, and if one of the designs of this movie was to have the audience attempt to put the pieces together along with George Smiley, due to the sketchiness of the characters we have met, this would be nigh near impossible. Also, Alfredson tends to jump back in time on occasion with his film, with no real indication that this happening, which might have you thinking on occasion ‘I thought that guy was dead’, which may also lead to some confusion when you come back to the present and see a dead guy and realize he’s not dead at all, which might make you think you’re back in the past again.

But if you stick with it, I’m of the opinion that ‘Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy’ is an engrossing and captivating movie experience. If you stick with it, and you happen to like these types of spy thrillers, you aren’t going to rest easy until you discover who the spy is. And while I wasn’t overjoyed with the style Alfredson chose to tell his story, the director did a great job of building slow tension within in his film so that a movie with no car chases, shootouts, or fist fistfights had about as much tension near its conclusion as any film I can think of in recent memory.

The acting performances are about as well as you would expect from a cast that’s a virtual who’s who of British Cinema, though in all honesty most of these actors outside of Gary Oldman and Benedict Cumberbatch didn’t have a heck of a lot to do in this movie considering how sparingly they were used. However Gary Oldman’s calm intensity was the driving force behind this film, and when the story wasn’t hell bent on mixing us up at times, we have to say it was borderline brilliant with some of the elements that were being used.

I know that there was a mini-series based on this material back in ’79 starring Alec Guiness which was highly regarded and that probably addresses a lot of the issues that this movie fell short in. Also, if you have seen this mini-series, you already know who the spy is which kinds of ruins all the fun. If you’ve seen that, I don’t think you’ll enjoy this version of ‘Tinker, Tailor, Soldier Spy’ all that much. If you haven’t seen the mini-series, which I haven’t, and you are patient with this film, I think your patience will be rewarded.